


will he speak to you soft words

by afearsomecritter (jsaer)



Series: flood lake [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series), UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Canon-Typical Violence, Drowning, Eldritch Elements, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25946935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsaer/pseuds/afearsomecritter
Summary: Matthew with a new last name in each town is a young man seeking his fortune to save up for marriage, a down on his luck former soldier, a bumbling idiot careening through life, a gunslinger between jobs.He finds that, sometimes, people will help the young man trying to save up to marry his sweetheart back east, the soldier and the gunslinger may be offered work, and that no one suspects the bumbling idiot.Especially when the bumbling, doe eyed idiot is a new priest trying to collect money for his church.(or, reverend matthew mason and becoming a priest)
Series: flood lake [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1813411
Comments: 9
Kudos: 17





	will he speak to you soft words

**Author's Note:**

> sort of sequel somehow composed almost entirely of flashback for "oh how these waters rise"

\--

Matthew has a vision, after.

He remembers staring up at the great, dark coils looping endlessly in the sky as Arabella bandaged his wound and thinking of how wondrous and _familiar_ they were.

(huddling in a nook in a cliffside after a dream in a church, half asleep and staring up at the slice of sky visible at the top of the chasm as the water surfaces dances and dips in a storm like the wind is swimming across the surface

following the edge of a rent in the earth he’d never seen on any map but he knows better than to trust those half faded memories by now and he glances down down down and there’s something massive and long and narrow moving down there, pacing him but he is in no danger and does not flee

waking from dream after dream of following the spines of not-mountains winding through endless dark waters)

He sleeps in his church after bidding Miriam good night, unwilling to sleep in the cold dry air after the events of the day. He had previously set up a small bed of sorts in the small side room on the ground floor despite the living quarters upstairs, little more than a bedroll and a trunk in a closet. While he still ventures upstairs to what was left of the kitchen to cook and the like he just feels better sleeping in the water. Matthew settles in to doze, sprawling on his bed, tail twitching and still too restless from the everything that’s been the past few days for real sleep when he blinks and he’s in a saloon.

Or he thinks it’s a saloon. There’s tables and chairs and a counter with bottles and glasses on the wall behind it. The saloon is empty, and he sees half drunk glasses of whiskey on tables and askew chairs and he swims toward the bar, air strange against his hide. 

The light is warm from flickering lamps and the windows empty into nothingness bright with stars. It’s quiet, save for the distant surrusus of waves on a rocky shore. He sets up against the bar, curling his tail underneath him as he watches the lanterns flicker and spit smoky bubbles. 

“Hello, dear,” someone says from behind the bar and Matthew startles hard enough to slam his tail against the bar front as he twists around. 

There’s a person behind the bar. There’s no face that Matthew can make out, only the impression of hundreds of needle sharp teeth bared in a friendly smile. 

(the bottles behind it are filled with amber whiskey and strangely colored fog and flickering lights-)

“How’ve you been finding your power?” The bartender says, leaning on the counter with arms crossed. “It is enough,” the unseen smile widens andwidenes and another voice speaks in time- “ _my o w n?_ ”

Matthew stares, stunned into silence. The unreality of the dry wood under his hands and against the skin of his tail surges and he _knows_ this is a vision and not a dream. 

"Why me?" he asks finally, quiet and nearly lost beneath the distant sound of waves, rushing and retreating like breathing. 

_why not drown me like others have drowned here, why gift me with this power chance and threat it may be, why speak to me why call me-_

"Why not? Those who would breathe their last here were it not for me are Mine, and those who are gifts," and Matthew feels the water in his lungs and remembers the sensation of _falling_ , "are doubly so. I wished to see what you would do. And besides,"

The double voices slip away and the Bartender is offering a wry smile with an empty face-

"-ain't much a God without a priest."

\--

(long before)

Isaac is riding along the top of the ridge and trailing behind the other men on patrol when a noise _happens_.

That's the only way he'll be able to describe it later, a sound so big it felt like an event, like it should have sent him and his horse flying instead of barely rustling the trees. He damn near goes flying anyway when his gelding screams and bucks frantically and Isaac has to spend the next few minutes desperately trying not to get thrown and calm his goddamn horse down at the same time. The other men's horses are panicking too and he catches a glimpse of Peters hitting the ground with a cut off yelp and sickening thud and his horse goes bolting past Isaac and he only just keeps Willa from following.

"What _the fuck was that?!_ " Isaac gasps once his horse is blessedly still if shivery and foam flecked beneath him. His voice cracks like it hasn't in years and he'd waste time being mortified if Varick isn't staring behind him, ashen faced. 

Isaac twists in his saddle, hand flying to his shotgun-

And freezes.

Where there had been distant plains and hills was just. Water. Glittering and endless under the noon sun.

"What the hell," Isaac whispers.

(there’s two days of dithering after that, everyone terrified to go towards the phantom lake, watches constantly sent up to the ridge to see if the shoreline is moving. two days or rumor and fear and a slow seep toward blame. two days. and then one night of screaming and death and blood and isaac _runs_ )

(and he drowns)

\--

Later there’s a dream of the endless spine of a mountain as Matthew sleeps in a ghost town, church creaking in the currents around him. He doesn’t remember the dream when he wakes up, not really. He just wakes up, uneasy and bewildered and leaves the empty (dead) town behind him.

If he glances over his shoulder several times, feelin like the empty windows were watchin’ him that's his own quickly swimming away business.

There's near fifteen years between a dream and a burnt church where he tricks and robs and gambles and survives. He learns to be harmless later, he learns to be frightening first.

\--

Matthew first tries his hand at gambling in a town near Cheyenne, hungry as hell and still flinching at the thought of being a bartender again.

(keeping his head down and being friendly and listening to woes meant fuck all in the face of gold and the fun of splattering blood-)

His face had healed by then, and between his scar, his too sharp cheekbones and the slow, winding movement the shape of his tail requires most eye him warily. But there’s plenty of people here to be wary of, so he don’t stand out much. 

He plays like he knows what he's doing, shrugging on the sort of easy confidence he's seen in men who know what they're doing so well the shape of it is imbedded in their bones, no loud cocky little shit or doe eyed sweetheart to be found (at this game at this town). He's played before, just a little, in barracks and bars. It's easy enough once you get the hang of it. Just another hand at the table, just good enough to make more than he loses before he drifts away to another game.

Small talk is common enough in between games and he offers a different story at each town because why not.

(why not why not because matthew does not exist neither did isaac, or luke, or-)

Matthew with a new last name in each town is a young man seeking his fortune to save up for marriage, a down on his luck former soldier, a bumbling idiot careening through life, a gunslinger between jobs-

an anything but a deserter who gave himself to the Lake instead of facing a mob.

(there's a guilt that lingers like lead chains if he lets himself remember, shame a burning ember because he _ran_ and never stopped even though he thought he was when he took that step back. coward the men had yelled and he thinks they weren't wrong)

He finds that, sometimes, people will help the young man trying to save up to marry his sweetheart back east, the soldier and the gunslinger may be offered work, and that no one suspects the bumbling idiot.

Especially when the bumbling, doe eyed idiot is a new priest trying to collect money for his church.

That one is far and in between cause it's so hard to do most places but he has a knack for it, he finds. It goes like that for a while, and gambling treats him well enough and he knows when to leave now.

\--

Matthew wakes up with scales.

He doesn't fucking notice until he's set up to shave and glances in the little mirror above the table in the inn he's staying in and there's something other than scruff on his face. Of course Matthew had noticed that not everyone in the Lake looked all that human above the waist but he'd never asked about it, never had anyone to ask.

He stares into the mirror at the flecks of dark scales following the line of his cheekbones, tracing them with his fingers. They're soft, feeling more like scar tissue or calluses than anything. He tilts his head this way and that, trying to make out the exact color. Dark, is all he can tell in the shitty mirror, and he glances at his tail and the iridescent black hide there.

(there's terror clutching at his sternum, trying to force his breaths faster but no no he's not hurt it's fine just- strange-)

He thinks of wicked claws and rare glimpse of sharp teeth and bares his own in the mirror. The blunt teeth he's had all his life meet his gaze and he glances back down to his hands. 

(you never heard of devils lake, boy? it _changes_ people-)

Matthew thinks of fleeing for the shoreline for one wild moment, fleeing the changes he knows are coming, fleeing when all the Lake has marked him with is a scattering of scales he can pass as freckles. 

But where the hell would he go? Keep running west till he hits the coast? Make his way through the Goddamned desert to _what_? 

He stares into the mirror, a cloudy cheap thing but the creep of inhuman scales still easily seen. He thinks of watching light rippling through the water and dancing along the forest floors and tall grasses waving in the current like they used to in the wind, storms whipping waves into shape and watching from below where there’s naught but gentle rocking, the oddities of the deep canyons and fish swimming well above his head and the surety of the strength of his tail and the constant sensation of life and movement around him and he thinks _I don't want to run_.

(when at last he turns away from the mirror it feels like a farewell)

\--

“ _Monahan?!_ ”

Isa-Matthew spins, hand flying to his pistol because that had _not_ been a friendly voice and oh fucking hell that was Graham Williams stalking down the walkway, the thud of his footsteps on the planks near as loud as the sound of Matthew’s heartbeat in his ears. Several folks scattered to the side, one man actually jumping platforms to get out of the way and Matthew is frozen.

Williams had been the kind of son of a bitch who thought spooking the horses was funny, funnier if someone was on one at the time, the kind of bully who simpered at those more powerful than him and had a collection of cronies to back him up. There was one such lookin' crony following behind in Williams’s wake. 

“The fuck are you doing out here you fucking _coward_ -” 

Williams in on him before Matthew can think to move, fist slamming into his ribs and Matthew yells and lashes out and there’s shouting and they’re grappling boots sliding on slick wood and fire slices long his leg and the fucker has a knife and then there is no wood beneath them and they hit the water with an almighty splash. Matthew thrashes and strikes out reflexively with his new grown claws and _drags_ and his tail hits frantically kicking legs and he has a split second of bewilderment before he lurches away and sees Williams, still human, hanging in the water with a gaping wound in his neck. 

Later Matthew will be grateful for the proximity of the settlement to shore, all trees and easily stirred up silt and too shallow to bother building beneath the water. Later he will wonder why Williams didn’t change when he hit the water, when he was still alive to shift. Later he hears how not everyone does, not when the Lake is still young (still greedy). 

Silt and muck hazed the water from the fight, so all everyone sees is two men go in, and one corpse that floats to the surface. No glimpse of what the mer form was of the man who did it, though the man with the victim knew who he was. Matthew only finds that out the next time he sees his bounty poster with an added charge of murder. 

Now he just flees for deeper water, dark clothes and darker hide impossible to see among the layered shadows of the trees.

(he won’t stop for a long, long time)

\--

Ghost towns are becoming far too familiar. There's a lot of them, out West. He's not sure if they're as prevalent out of the Lake as in, skeletons of settlements scattered like fishbones after a meal. Quiet, sad little things that he drifts through like one more ghost in their walls. He meets others sometimes, though they rarely speak to each other, brief flickers of life as the Lake gets deeper.

There are living towns too, here and there, lanterns in the dark among the mountain valleys.

\--

The preacher he meets in a chapel is an old man called Father Keenes.

The chapel isn't anywhere near Rapid City, it ministers a small town that had been nestled in a mountain valley that was now near the center of the Lake. One of many mining towns, copper bled from stone veins. It’s still thriving despite having all of the tunnels rearranged, the town itself now clinging to the edge of an underwater mountain, the valley falling far far below. 

Matthew meets Father Keenes on account of how Matthew breaks into the church assuming it’s empty and a good place to sleep for the night without spending any of his already meager coin.

It is not.

\--

Matthew meets Father Keenes via a shotgun barrel leveled at his head and nearly draws his own pistol in turn before the outfit the man is wearing registers and oh hell the church ain’t empty.

He lets the old man chase him backwards out from the door onto the porch, hands up and sputtering apologies all the while (harmless harmless harmless don’t show teeth).

“I’m sorry, I- I thought it was empty, I was just looking for shelter and I was hopin’ to pray,” he stutters, backing up past the edge of the front porch. 

To his utter bewilderment it works, shotgun lower and letting Matthew focus past the end of the barrel and the impression of preacher’s clothing. The man holding the shotgun must be near his mid sixties, much smaller than Matthew and with a silver and brown banded tail to go with his mostly salt and pepper hair and beard. 

“Hoping to pray, this late?” the preacher says in a startling deep drawl. 

“Uh, yes.”

“Well,” he says, and gestures Matthew to come back on to the porch, “it’s a lovely night, so why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind? I’m Father Keenes, by the by.” 

“Ma-Matthew Mason.”

\--

“I’m not particularly sure I’m one for redemption, Father,” Matthew says.

Father Keenes hums, still looking upward like he can see the stars through the storm tossed waves above. "In him we have redemption through his blood, and the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace," he finally says, and he does glance over at Matthew then, a gentle smile quirking his lips at Matthew's blank expression.

"Ephesians 1:7," he offers like that explains anything, "Christ gave his life so that we may be forgiven of all our sins." Then, at Matthew’s still uncomprehending expression, says "You are not particularly familiar with the Bible, are you?" 

He sounds more amused than offended.

"Saw a page of it once," Matthew replies, "Said Job...4 something. It was laying on a podium of an empty church in a town up north. It, uh, it said something about a leviathan."

He gets a raised eyebrow but the priest allows the deflection.

"A page is good, you're already doing better than some of my parishioners," is the gently wry reply. "We accept all sorts here as it is, forgiveness is open to all, no prerequisites needed."

Matthew hums but makes no reply.

Father Keenes leaves him be, after that. Matthew offers to find a proper place to stay, still embarrassed at being caught but the old man waves him away and even insists on giving Matthew an extra blanket despite Matthew having his own.

This church doesn’t creak around him as he settles on a pew, tail draping over the far end onto the floor. The building is too sturdily built for that, or maybe it’s just too still here. He falls asleep quickly, and doesn’t dream. He leaves before the sun rises, and leaves the blanket neatly folded in the pew.

\--

He picks up a Bible in the next town, a proper one with a treated leather cover with pretty embossing instead of the cheap paper one he'd picked up when he first started doing the traveling priest con. He picks up a rosary too, liking the clink of the beads as they run through his new claws. It's just a prop, he tells himself.

If he gets bored one winter evening, skin itching in the dry warmth of his hotel room and actually decides to read it properly instead of skimming for quotes, that’s just because there’s nothing else to do. If he thinks of an old man and unwarranted kindness while paging through treated paper that’s his own business. If the next time he opens his mouth when wearing a preacher’s collar and words of forgiveness and redemption fall out it’s just part of the con. If it seems to help people that just sells it better, why not.

If he’s started to believe it, just a little bit, finds himself asking, praying, beads slipping through fingers in the dark of night sending pleas to something he isn’t sure exists. Well. He’s started to believe, just a bit.

He plays at being a priest in Rapid City, works as a priest in Rapid City for a good year or so before a telegram comes, asking for a new preacher for a town called Deadwood.

(he prays, kneeling on wooden floorboards with rosary beads leaving indentations in skin, to something he knows exists)

\--

(after)

Matthew swims high up, occasionally twisting to skim the surface of the water with his fingers, feeling the wisps of cool air that make their way past the steam rising from the Lake on his bare fingers.

He's not wearing his usual priestly get up, traded for a simple shirt and vest under his leather jacket. It hadn't felt right, dressing in the vestments of another God given what he's planning to do.

( _come find me_ endless depths of a familiar rent in the earth laughter twisting around the words like coils of soft scale and sodden silky feathers- like rope willing wound around- like a dare-like a b e t)

Dawn has barely broken, light skimming the tops of the small waves and diffusing into the top of the water. Matthew had left town hours before, making his steady way to the great canyon well east of town.

He can see it now actually, the tear in the ground all the darker for the light filtering down around it. He pauses, staring down into the not empty void. 

He could leave. He knows that. He could turn away now and not suffer any consequences, not have the power he's been given taken away, not have more not-dreams of a new-old God than his friends.

Matthew hangs in the water, staring down into the abyss below.

He'd never have _more_ either.

(what is a god without-)

Matthew dives.

\--

Matthew did not understand, before, why the ability to see in the dark was one of the gifts given unto them.

As he dives and dives, light leeching away like blood draining from a wound and the world slides into monochrome the thought of how he would be utterly blind were it not for the gift sits in the back of his mind.

The trees grow to massive size as he descends, branches as thick around as his tail then larger, and larger. Some spike from the side of the chasm like sharpened posts in a trench. Others just rise from the still distant floor. 

He sees life every now and again.

Leaves fluttering in the current or from something he can’t see.

A vulture flying past, wings unmoving in the current. A fox watching him from a branch, eyes gleaming in its furless face.

Something massive far far below, just a glimpse of mottled grey skin, winding through the trunks.

Matthew continues to swim, lower and lower.

(there’s some irony to this, he thinks, that to learn of his God he must _descend_ )

\--

Rough bark catches at his claw tips, softer cloth brushing his forehead from where he guards his face from errant branches. He can’t see anymore, can only use the lines in the bark of the massive tree trunk to guide him, an anchor line in the endless black. He keeps close to the wood, tail and occasionally belly brushing against it. He cannot lose contact.

(it’s so dark his eyes are showing him sparks of color and floating things, offerings on the innards of his own eyeballs to compensate for the utter lack outside)

It is a lightless void but it is not _soundless_. 

The great trees that must be around him creak, a thousand tiny tugs or current at their topmost branches going down down down like a struck wire and deepening into noises that he feels more than hears. 

He hears smaller noises too.

Scratches and scrapes as something scrambles across bark far and away and entirely too close. Matthew does not flinch, only bares his teeth and hisses a low rasping snarl.

The sound flees.

Time ceased after the light did. Matthew doesn’t know how long he’s been swimming, not how long he must continue to. He’s not tired, the slow winding beats of his tail propelling him steadily and surely.

The world has narrowed to the feeling of the bark beneath him, the flow of water around him, the low hum of the world, of the Lake.

At some point he starts to pray.

It is not the Lord’s Prayer that falls from his tongue. 

“I come for your blessing,” he murmurs to the bark beneath him

“I come because you asked me,” he says to the listening water around him.

“I come because I am greedy, because you gave me power, and I gave you my- my soul.”

The water is cold here, where the warmth of the sun has never touched it. The world is cool ink and his heartbeat echoed by the breathing of the trees.

“I come because I am a foolish man, I come because you dared me,” he says, scar pulling as he smiles into the could be nothing.

“I come because I am a coward, and do not wish to disappoint you.”

“I come to ask for the protection of my...of my friends. I come to ask what you even want with _me_ ,” the last is spat, is whispered, is an offering of bewilderment. 

“I come because……”

He glides through the dark, blind and listening. The bark is warm beneath his fingertips.

“I came because you called me your own.”

His hand leaves bark and touches dirt.

Touches feather.

Touches scale.

_H e l l o, m y p r i e s t_

\--

Matthew wakes with moonlight seeping through his eyelids.

He blinks slowly, and spends a long, long time watching the rippling veils of cool light and just drifting. The chasm is a slash of darkness below him, the same sort of dark as a familiar room at night. 

He breathes, feeling the rush of water in his lungs like he hasn’t in years. There’s no terror in it. Just an awareness, the same way you sometimes feel the flutter of muscle in your chest when you pay attention. 

(his skin aches, blue lightning flickering in his veins)

Eventually he twists himself to look up at the sky through the water, staring up at the stars. Once he’s gotten his bearings he starts to make his way back to the church. 

(far, far below, something watches him go)

\----


End file.
